The present invention relates generally to automatic accompanying devices for executing an automatic accompaniment on the basis of accompaniment style data including performance data, and more particularly to an improved automatic accompanying device and method capable of generating desired modifications of accompaniment style data with utmost ease.
Of various automatic accompanying devices, there have been known ones which can modify numerous preset (i.e., existing) accompaniment style data to provide modified (variation of) accompaniment style data as desired by a user. In some of such modifying-type automatic accompanying devices, a set of modifying data is prestored for each of the accompaniment style data in order to provide modified accompaniment style data. The modifying data has a time length equal to or greater than that of the preset or existing accompaniment style data; usually, the modifying data has a one-measure length.
However, the conventional modifying-type automatic accompanying devices would present the following problems because the modifying data is prestored for each of the existing accompaniment style data so that the preset accompaniment style data and the modifying data are handles together as a unit. Namely, when two different modified accompaniment style data are to be made from one of the existing accompaniment style data, the existing accompaniment style data has to be copied into a storage area usable by a user (user-style storage area) to prepare two sets of the same existing accompaniment style data, which results in the copied data quantity becoming twice as large as that of the existing or original accompaniment style data and occupying a great part of the user-style storage area. Further, because only three different accompaniment style data, i.e., the original accompaniment style data and first and second modified accompaniment style data, are obtained due to the limited capacity of the storage area, it is not possible to provide an automatic accompaniment full of variety. In other words, with the known modifying-type automatic accompanying devices, the original accompaniment style data can not be modified effectively without requiring a great part of the storage area.
In addition, due to the fact that creation of a long accompaniment style data set inevitably involves a considerable increase in data quantity and prevents efficient use of the storage area, the conventional modifying-type automatic accompanying devices can only create short accompaniment style data. Thus, in performance, the devices can only reproduce such short accompaniment style data in a repetitive manner, which would result in a monotonous accompaniment; thus, the devices could not achieve accompaniments full of variety.